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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29854137">blessed are the forgetful</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphiics/pseuds/sapphiics'>sapphiics</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, and she needs more backstory anyway, highschool jj, i just want to project onto jj, totally based off of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:54:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,288</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29854137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphiics/pseuds/sapphiics</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been too long, and JJ is tired of grieving by herself.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>blessed are the forgetful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and immediately thought of this for JJ! I'm thinking of doing this as a series for the entire team so let me know what you think. Also I made JJ fifteen when Roslyn dies as opposed to 10/11, it was easier to write.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took JJ’s parents 108 days to cave in. </p>
<p>The funeral had happened over two months ago, and everything had been moved to the garage. Marked boxes stacked in a corner. When her parents had the procedure done, the technicians put tape over her name, her parents none the wiser.</p>
<p>JJ had nothing but contempt for them the first few weeks. </p>
<p>She already thought it was selfish how they were splitting up, leaving her in the middle of the two of them. What they did only further solidified her anger at them. Now, she’s starting to believe they were right. It would be so much easier to forget. Forget her smile, forget her eyes, forget how angry she was in the days leading up. Screaming at Dad, yelling at Mom, shutting JJ out. Forget finding their first child, their seventeen year old daughter, bleeding to death in the bathtub with Dad’s razor blade lying next to her.</p>
<p>Only <em>they<em>  didn’t find her. </em></em></p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>Their other daughter did. The one they still have, who's still alive. Who's still here and loves them unconditionally even when what they did feels as if they stuck a knife in her back and twisted, leaving her in her twisted misery to suffer alone. </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>It hurts to be around them, to the point where JJ can't even eat until late at night, when they've long gone to bed. The technicians told her to refrain from speaking of Roslyn anymore. Their own daughter, gone. A memory they both erased to ease their pain, their hurt. Leaving JJ in her own mourning, her pain crashing down upon her with nobody to help. No shoulder to cry on, arms to wrap around her. </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>It’s impossible, because they simply <em>don’t<em> remember. They don’t remember sitting in the only hospital in their town, John and Sandy Jareau  cramped on a hospital bed smiling down at their first child. Roslyn finally taking her first steps at 18 months in the backyard as they taped the entire thing. </em></em></em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>They erased those memories, burned those tapes. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Can’t remember her first day of kindergarten, JJ nestled in the arms of her mother as Roslyn bounded up the stairs of their elementary school. It’s all gone for them, living on only in JJ’s memory. Like a ghost no one else believes in. A spirit haunting no one but her. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>She keeps everything. It doesn’t matter if the technicians say it could cause harmful triggers to her parents. They chose that brain damage, the easy way out. She’s done putting any of their needs first. Her parents left her to suffer alone. JJ will not push aside her feelings to protect them.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Not when it's what they were supposed to do for her.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>  Roslyn’s necklace sits on her neck, ‘a gift from a friend.’ Her journal sits on JJ’s bedside, her shoes under the bed. Her blankets have replaced JJ’s own, and her clothes sit in a basket at the bottom of JJ’s closet. The perfume is JJ’s favorite memento. When it's late, and she just wants to scream at her parents for moving on and leaving her in the unbearable grief of losing a sister at 15, she sits in her basket of clothes, sprays the perfume, and closes her eyes.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em> And for one fleeting second, she can almost trick her brain into believing that she isn’t utterly alone.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>     There’s this moment every morning JJ wakes up. This one euphoric moment. Where she doesn’t remember anything. Her mind is completely blank, and for a split second, she feels happy. And then reality sets in, her despair kicks her further than she could ever imagine, and the guilt pools in her stomach.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Guilt because the best part of her day, the best part of her life for the past 108 days, is the moment when she forgets she was a sister. She once had a sister.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em> JJ clutches Ros’s necklace around her neck, dropping back down into her sheets. She starts sympathizing more with her mother and father.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>It takes months for her to work up the courage to schedule an appointment with Lacuna. Day 224. JJ knows she won’t follow through with the procedure, but a part of her needs to see it. See how her parents just erased Roslyn. The doctor made it seem so normal, just help create a map of that person in your brain, and they’ll delete all the memories for you. You even wake up in your own bed. JJ was with her grandparents that day, none the wiser of what her parents were doing until dinner time came around and they had to explain to her what was going on. How her parents took her sister and deleted her. Like a file in their brain they didn’t need anymore. She walks out of the clinic, disgusted by the fact that for a pitiful minute, she was seriously contemplating following in the footsteps of her Mom and Dad. The harsh Pennsylvanian winter bites at her cheeks, freezing the tears she knows are bound to fall as she briskly walks home. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>A pamphlet is tucked in her back pocket.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“She was angry and withdrawn,” JJ exclaims bitterly, ”it was like living with a stranger! I hate saying it out loud but all I could think about initially, before it really set in, was that there would finally be peace.” The technician, a guy named Stan, motions for her to continue, ”But then it wasn’t peace, it was just a flood of grief, and I’m angry because everybody but me has either moved on or forgotten about her and I cannot keep living like this,” she finishes, angry tears sneaking out of her eyes and onto her flushed cheeks. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Thank you Ms. Jareau, we have enough. If you could just lean back and place your head under here,” tapping the mechanical contraption hanging from the ceiling,” we could get started. When the procedure is finished, you will awaken in your bed as if nothing has occurred, your memories of your sister completely gone.” JJ’s face slackens, the reality of what she's doing feeling like a gut punch. Her sister, her Rosalyn, erased. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>All her mementos, all their memories together, just gone. The sacred fifteen years they got to spend together. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Could she really do that to her beloved sister, wipe her away like a dirty mark on her life? </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>But then JJ remembers the pain. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>The horrific overwhelming, all-consuming pain she’s been in for the past 9 months. The dreadful loneliness she’s been suffocating in around her parents, around the entire town that looks at her with their pitiful eyes. The sob-filled nights that she spends huddled in her sister’s blankets, desperately reaching for someone who simply isn’t there anymore. Is it so bad that she wants to be free of that?</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>JJ wakes up in her bed, the sunrise shining through her window. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>And just like every other day, that utter happiness hits her. Her hand lifts towards her neck, nothing around it. The happiness stays, the feeling settling into her head, heart, a warm flush rushing through her body.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em> And then JJ turns, her eyes catching a glance at her bed stand table. </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Lying on top of her dead sister's journal, is that same dead sister’s necklace. And the sadness pours, the same feeling washing over JJ for the millionth time. It’s more bittersweet today, her immense grief worth it because she has a sister to remember. JJ sits up in her bed, grabs the notebook and necklace, and slides back into the blanket, cracking open the journal like an old book. And for the first time in 276 days since Rosalyn Jareau died, JJ relishes in every single memory.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is also posted on my tumblr @temily</p></blockquote></div></div>
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